The Headmistress (VMC)

I love this book. Angela Thirkell is one of my favorite authors. I also love Elizabeth Cadell, whose books are being republished on kindle now. I also love D E Stevenson and I am hoping they will continue to republish her books on kindle.

This one has the usual cast of characters and circumstances, but her war years novels seem a bit more realistic. She isn’t for everyone, but I enjoy most of her novels.

Nothing like a novel by Thirkell to cheer the day. Funny, romantic, and historically interesting for a fresh look at WW2 on the English homefront.

Some algorithm brought up this book after I'd read some Barbara Pym, and this is several steps below Pym in literary quality. It is a story of a headmistress, but we don't really get to know her, nor any other character, very deeply. I kept reading, thinking there would be more development of the characters and the plot, but no, it is lacks the rise in conflict and is more like a long narrative of life in a British village -- with the vicar, the doctor, the wives, adult children, the servants, etc. -- which goes on and on and then ends. I enjoyed parts of it. Read Pym for a richer reading experience.

Quick service

One of my favorite authors. Its great that Amazon has access to often out of date authors.

I love Angela Thirkell's Barsetshire novels and am reading them in order as much as possible; each book is a delight, like visiting old friends. This book opens several years into the rationing, blackouts and hardships of World War II; the residents of Barsetshire are coping with stiff upper lips and dry humor, still enjoying the small pleasures of gossip at the occasional dinner or tea party with neighbors and anticipating visits home from children on leave. The Beltons of Harefield Park fear they'll have to sell the family estate, but are saved from that desperate measure by the evacuated Hosiers' Girls' Foundation School, which leases their mansion for the school. Some of my favorite new characters to add to the ever-increasing cast of Barsetshire residents include Miss Sparling, the headmistress of the school (and title), her assistant Miss Holly, Mr. Oriel the vicar, and Oxford don Mr. Carton. As with all of the books in the series, members of the same county families, servants, tradespeople and clergy walk on and off and devoted fans get to revisit with these old friends, make new ones, and eavesdrop on the gossip and news - I love it! Even though these books were written in the 1930s and '40s I find them timeless because of Thirkell's affectionate and devastatingly honest insights into human nature, as in this passage describing Mr. and Mrs. Belton's reaction when their son comes home on leave: "This pleasant warm content was suddenly broken by a shattering noise outside the house and a violent ringing of the telephone...They now heard...the well-known voice of their younger son Charles. His parents, though they would rather have died than admit it to any outsider, to each other, or even to their secret selves, experienced a peculiar sinking of the heart, or rather the spirits at this sound. Not but that either of them would cheerfully have gone to the scaffold for Charles, or given him the best bed, all the butter ration and the most comfortable chair; but they knew from fatal experience that whatever they did would be just wrong...And it was much the same with Freddy and Elsa, though Freddy at twenty-nine was approximating to something human in his parents' house. Mrs. Belton wondered if all the other parents felt the same." Brilliant, and so true - who amongst us hasn't felt that sinking feeling as a beloved but irritatingly angsty, sulking teenager slouched into the room?! I find such insightful, humorous but true gems buried throughout Thirkell's deceptively mundane descriptions and observations of daily lives and routines among Barsetshire's residents. Delightful, and a treat I savor every time I read (and no doubt eventually reread) one of her sweet, charming and funny books.

This book took me months to read, I never quite got into it, didn't quite give up on it and suddenly I blinked and it ended! Umm, what, where, why, umm who? Yes it was all neatly tied up; but not with a ribbon and a bow, more like a Blue Peterish "and here's one I finished earlier." It certainly wouldn't tempt me to pick up another Thirkell, although I have enjoyed other books she wrote. All that being said ( and why I didn't give up) it is an excellent social comment on its time...early WW2, in a rural village.

A delightful tale. Thirkell wittily observes the manners of the English Middle and Upper Middle Classes of eighty odd years ago. She gently points the finger at, and takes the rise out of, the Social Mores of yesteryear. Recommended.

The picture of ordinary life in wartime is indelible; the humour is both pointed and delicate; the division of humanity into notices and the oblivious ones—all these are vintage Thirkell. The portrait of another strong and interesting woman who does not leap instantly to marriage is not unusual for Thirkell, but here it stems not from weariness with men but from the interesting work and life of her own making.

Another wonderful Angela Thirkell novel. Escapism into an earlier era... Great service, as always by Amazon. Ordered on Saturday in my postbox on Sunday...

Delightfully funny and very dated. I was alive at that time and knew people who thought that way! A different world but people are often much the same now!

Great read. Thirkell was amazing at writing humour.